How to Build a Game #52 How to Fix Things (#4)

I love drafting cards. It is one of my all-time favorite mechanics. What I don’t like about drafting is the amount of time it can take for the drafting deck to get around the table. There are times when Analysis Paralysis takes over and “people speed bumps” slow down the procedure. There are times when the group is big and it just takes a long time for the deck to makes its way around the table.

What I really don’t like about these situations is that a mechanic I love can be its own worst enemy. There are people at the table that are waiting for the cards to get to them. When we are using drafting as a mechanic for a game, we always split the deck and have multiple piles moving around the table at one time.

A nice side effect of splitting the deck for drafting, is the hidden information generated after the drafting round is done. I was never a fan of drafting systems where alert players can deduce, based on their spot in line, which players might have picked which cards. I realize that strategy could be argued as good gamesmanship, but that situation for this mechanic always left a bad taste in my mouth. Because of this, I like to make sure that there is at least some level of “hmm…they could have anything in their hand.”

If you have any comments or questions, leave a comment here or email Chris at c.renshall.tgik.games@gmail.com

If you have made it this far, would you like to go a little farther? We are thinking about starting a regular Google hangout with other designers. We can try to design a game together, we can talk about designers we are working on, you can ask us questions. We can make it whatever we want. What we really want to do is get to know the people that are willing to read all the way to the bottom of our posts. Please contact Chris on Twitter or send him an email and if we are able to get a minimal amount of interest, we can work on putting something together.